100 The Grizzly Bear 



skinning with a pocket knife containing one three-inch 

 blade and one smaller one, and as this was the only re- 

 source at hand I got it out. I was looking around for the 

 sort of club I needed when I heard a snort, and looking 

 back saw that the bear had decided to turn his attention 

 to me. I sprang back, caught my foot in a root, and fell 

 flat on my back in the creek, with my head about a foot 

 lower than my heels. "Now," thought I, "you are in for 

 a good chewing," and being unable to take any other pre- 

 caution, I grasped a bush in my left hand, got a good grip 

 on the knife, and determined to run it into the bear's belly 

 and open him up. But when the bear got his front paws 

 over the log, with his nose just at my feet, both dogs 

 grabbed him by the flanks, and bear and dogs were all 

 tumbled back into the pen. 



As they fell I made a thrust and drove the knife in be- 

 hind the bear's right foreleg, and the blade slipped in so 

 easily that it gave me an idea. I got up and, placing one 

 knee against the log and the other foot against the root 

 that had tripped me, I waited my chance and made an- 

 other thrust. Had I had a long-bladed hunting knife the 

 fight would have ended then and there, but the knife was 

 short and the bear fat. So that the stab was only an in- 

 cident. 



Up to this time I had, in a desultory sort of way, kept 

 on yelling; the bear, when he got an unusually hard nip, 

 had given an occasional bawl; and now one dog and now 

 the other had given a yelp when he feared the bear was 

 about to get him. But now these sounds were hushed. 

 Each of us had his work cut out and we got right down to 

 business. I kept my place by the log, and when the bear 



